Wednesday, November 26, 2008

He caught her as she went slack and gently laid her on the table. The dagger had gone so deep into her heart and beyond that the tip was now sticking out some half a dozen inches beyond her back and yet there was no blood on it. Therese felt no pain, in fact, she felt nothing. He kissed her on her forehead and closed her eyes.

“As you can tell by now, my dear Therese, you are not dead.” he said out loud. “The Toliver is a mystical blade and does not kill or wound you but it does render its victim inert, that is to say, awake, conscious, but completely devoid of all bodily functions. If I was to take this blade out of you, you would become alive again and there would be no marks or cuts on your body. Your body would be back to normal again. “ He opened her eyes again and turned her head so she could look at him. He unbuttoned his shirt and opened it, exposing his chest. “See, no scars or scabs. You may not know it but you are not breathing. This is why you thought I was dead all those years ago.Now you know, I was not. You could have easily finished the job then but I am glad you did not. If you had, this night would not be possible.” He smiled an evil smile and closed her eyes again, gently turning her head back to its original position. He left the room and came back with a small pillow which he placed under her head. He then noticed that the blade had slid upwards halfway out of her chest.

“Oh, no no no. Can’t have that.” he mumbled to himself. He went to a cabinet and produced a small sledgehammer. “Knifey has to stay in you.” He began to hammer the knife back down. Since it was already poking out Therese’s back, his pounding pushed it into the table itself. ‘He is nailing me to the table.’ thought Therese, ‘I wonder why.’ She was alive and in no pain but neither could she move nor could she fall asleep. ‘So this is how I left him. He must have hated me for years.’ She could not even feel the blade push through her as he hammered the hilt to her chest. He pulled on it to see if it would budge and it did not.

“One last whack for good luck,” he said as he hit the dagger harder than he had done so previously. Therese felt the hilt push her ribs up against her heart.

“And you are going to need all the luck you can get.”

Therese heard him walk down the stairs to the basement where he stayed for about five minutes. She then heard him walk back up.

“Wow, you sure brought a lot of incendiaries.You weren’t taking any chances were you ?” He sat down and opened her eyes. He turned her face so that she could see him again. “I know what you are going through right now, but forget about all that stuff. You need to listen to me and remember everything.”

“In about an hour, your little devices will go off. I added a little gasoline to get things spread right so this old house will go right up. Nothing will stop it.” He stood up and glanced directly into her eyes. “By that time I will be long gone. There will be no one one here to help you.. You might be wondering why I pounded you to the table. There are two reasons. If there is an explosion and there is a good chance there will be, I don’t want you bouncing around the kitchen. Also on the odd chance that someone does come in to rescue you, they will not be able to pull that knife out. The table is bolted to the floor so this is where you will remain until the flames comsume you. Your body is pretty near indestructible but after an hour or two of intense heat it will break down. You, however, will feel no pain. So I’d say you have about three hours max to free yourself. Good Luck.”

He turned to walk away and got almost as far as the kitchen door and then turned around and smacked himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh, I almost forgot. I need to give you some knowledge. “ He seemed to reach into his forehead and pulled out a small green pyramid. He took the pyramid and placed on her forehead. She felt a slight burning sensation as she watched it dissolve into her head. “It is Wyrd knowledge. It only makes itself available when you need it. I have also written how to escape on the back of your pillow. That’s in case you get stuck and need a cheat sheet. Stay calm..” He bent down and kissed her. “Gotta go. Bye my love.”

He turned and walked away. This time, Therese heard the kitchen door swing open and shut, followed not too long afterward by the sound of the big massive front door opening and shutting and then there was silence. At that point, Therese knew she was alone.

‘Good,’ thought Therese, ‘now I can finally work at getting free.’This was false bravado. She didn’t dare attempt even thinking about escape while he was around for fear that he could read her mind. Now she was rid of him and could start thinking about escaping. But first she had to deal with the panic she was feeling. She was never more scared in her life, not even when she was trapped in his magic snare earlier that evening. ‘This is his revenge,’ she thought, ‘he made me young so I would suffer longer.’ If she could breathe, her breath would have been frozen inside of her; if her heart could beat, it would be beating a mile a minute. ‘Hours,’ she thought, ‘I will be burning for hours.’ She had no doubt that he told her the truth about the fire. ‘He’s that way. He will only tell you enough to increase your sense of terror.’ She had no doubt that the fire would start in one hour since that was the setting she herself had put on the incendary devices. The idea that he added gasoline meant he wanted the fire to spread fast, faster than she would have done.

‘Why ,’ she pondered, ‘does he want to kill me fast ?’ That question knawed at her and gave her hope. ‘Maybe, he does not want me to suffer at all. Maybe he wants to kill me as fast as possible, so I won’t figure out how he got out of this situation.’ Hope began to spring up inside of her like wildfire. She began to consider her situation and what she knew about it. He had been in this exact same situation and escaped despite the fact no one ever came to help him. So there was a way out. There would be no help coming for her, since she had told no one about her plans to burn the house and this would be the last place anyone would look for her, if they were looking at all. Besides, they would not miss her for at least another day, let alone go looking for her. No, she would have to do this on her own.

She remembered how he was long ago, how he was always testing her, giving her tasks to do with no instructions, not caring if she succeeded or failed. ‘Oh my God,’ she thought, ‘That’s it ! He is not trying to kill me - he is testing me !‘ Now, hope stood as the victor over panic and despair. ‘There is a way out and he wants me to find it !’

A flood of memories came back to her. “The ultimate test always deals with life or death.” His words came back to her. He was telling her about how a sorcerer teaches his apprentice. “The teacher sets up the lesson this way in order eliminate hemming and hawing, to leave no room for anything other than success since the greatest motivation humans have is to keep living. Failure means death. “ She had thought his words absurd at the time. ‘If anybody puts me in a life or death situation,’ she had said at the time, ‘they had better run because I will succeed and then I will come after them.” He laughed and told her: ‘Don’t worry, I would never do that to you. You couldn’t handle it.’ Those words had cut her like a dagger. It was then that she began to doubt her relationship with him.

‘God, how time changes things,’ she mused, ‘and yet does not. He did not think I was ready then but does now. Back then, I had fire in my veins. It was called youth. Nobody could show or tell me anything, not even him. I was in love with him; madly, wildly in love, and I would have done anything he told me to. And then he told me I was not ready, that I was not good enough for him and my love turned swiftly into hate. It wasn’t long after that I stabbed him in the back when he was most vulnerable. I stabbed him in the back with that damn dagger, the very same one that now holds me down . He trusted me and I stabbed him in the back and I loved doing it. ’

She stopped for a second and sobbed a spiritual sob since her body could not and would not cry. ‘How could I have done that to the man I loved ? How could I have been so cruel and thoughtless ?,’ she thought, ‘How could he ever forgive me ?’

It was was the thought of him that brought her out of her feelings of remorse. ‘The test,’ she thought, ‘I have to focus on the test. There is no time now for this sentimental crap.’ She laughed. Those, of course, were his words. She could see the wisdom in them now. She would focus on the task at hand. She knew she had the answer inside of her. He had gone out of his way to take away any possible physical means of her escape - that was why he pounded the knife into the table. That was why he told her the table was bolted to the floor, she realized, to prevent her from wasting time trying to think of a physical means of escape.

‘You gotta love him,’ she gushed, ‘he is efficient. He used my own devices against me and the very knife I had betrayed him with. I’ll bet he made up this whole plot on the spot. What a genius.” She stopped herself again. ‘Oh God,’ she thought, ‘I’m falling in love with him again. I got to stop wasting my time on this sentimental crap.’

She tried to think of what to do next but she couldn’t come up with anything. Nothing made sense. She thought of her old yoga buddy Diane, who never seemed to be without a plan or an idea. What would Diane do ? What did Diane always say to do ? She pictured the image of Diane sitting cross-legged in front of her mind’s eye. The words came to her instantly: ‘Don’t hesitate, just meditate. The idea will find you. You just have to make yourself available and willing. And you have to WANT it.’

‘No problem there, ‘ Therese thought, ‘ I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.’ Therese pictured herself in a meditation pose, breathing the yoga breath and instantly she found herself in a deep relaxed state of mind. It seems that not having to deal with a physical body made this process much easier. Another thing to thank him for. At that moment, he appeared in front of her.

‘The answer you seek is in there. ‘ He pointed to a swirling black patch just beyond him. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask her.’ He pointed to a mirror which held Therese’s own reflection. ‘Trust your heart,’ the mirror-Therese said, ‘the answer lies in the void.’

‘The void, of course,’ the real Therese sighed, ‘the answer is in the last place I want to go now.’

‘The void is the place of nothing, absolute nothing. It is not a place really or even an empty place because both places are something. The void is nothing. And as such it is the birthplace of creation, where all ideas come from. All creativity comes from the void. All potential things exist with no substance in the void.’ The words of her yoga teacher echoed in front of her. ‘It is a wonderous place you can visit anytime, the only catch is you can’t take your ego or your consciousness with you. And it is a place without time, so you could spend days there without even knowing it.’

‘But I don’t have days, just minutes, ‘ thought Therese, ‘and I don’t have bodily functions to yank myself out automatically. I could go in there and never come out. Trouble is, I have no other choice.’ So she gathered herself as best she could and dove into the dark swirling mass.

When she became conscious again, she was instantly aware of the smell of smoke.(end of part 3)

2 comments:

Such darkness in this story yet such light. Description of knife incident so graphic got me squeamish.I am glad you ease the tension a little bit with some positive words here and there, to soften things a bit. I am enjoying Therese. I love her intellectual, pondering side that seems to get her out of these dire situations. I also feel I learn from this story, there are little lessons subtly placed throughout. A page turner of a story, keep going!!!!!Bev